Welcome to the streaming era, Homicide: Life On The Street

Homicide: Life On The Street, NBC’s critically acclaimed ’90s police drama, is finally coming to streaming. Appropriately, the series will be hosted on Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming service. You’ll be able to revisit the classic series, which won four Primetime Emmys, three Peabody Awards, and a host of other accolades, starting on August 19. Homicide: Life On The Street was a police procedural about a fictionalized version of the Baltimore Police Department’s homicide unit, based on the book Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon. Created by Paul Attanasio, the show ran for seven seasons (plus a movie) and featured a murderer’s row (no pun intended) of stars, including Ned Beatty, Richard Belzer, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Giancarlo Esposito, Daniel Baldwin, Jon Polito, Clark Johnson, Kyle Secor, Reed Diamond, Michelle Forbes, Peter Gerety, Isabella Hofmann, Toni Lewis, Michael Michele, Max Perlich, Jon Seda, Callie Thorn, and Andre Braugher, who won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in 1998. Simon (who famously went on to create another Baltimore-based crime show, The Wire) teased the series’ streaming news last month, offering insight as to why it had taken so long to get Homicide streaming in the first place. “Word is that NBC has managed to finally secure the music rights necessary to sell Homicide: Life On The Streets [sic] to a streaming platform,” he posted on Twitter/X. “Andre, Richard, Yaphet, Ned, and so many others who labored on that wonderful show on both sides of the camera will soon regain a full share of  their legacy.  Stay tuned for more details.” In a reply, he added that the music rights “were negotiated long ago before streaming existed as a viewing platform. A fair compensation for the new use needed to be negotiated.” He shared that producers “Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson and Gail Mutrux undertook the lobbying effort” for bringing the series into the streaming era. Simon previously posted clarifying that he’d been miscredited for in Homicide, writing, “I provided source material and learned the world of television on that show and proudly, but direct your full thanks to the great Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson, showrunners and universe builders.” He has repeatedly emphasized their role in the show and that of the others “who were the architects of this great drama, and who had the patience and generosity to teach so many of us how to tell a story that matters on television.”